Lou Gehrig (1903 – 1941)
Born Ludwig Heinrich Gehrig, was an American Major League Baseball player in the first half of the twentieth century.
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Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?
Lou Gehrig was to baseball what Gary Cooper was to the movies: a figure of unimpeachable integrity, massive and incorruptible, a hero. Today, both are seen as paradigms of manly virtue. Decent and God-fearing, yet strongly charismatic and powerful.
So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for.
The older newspapermen sit in the chicken coop press boxes around the circuit and watch Lou Gehrig go through the laborious movements of playing first base, and wonder if they’re seeing one of the institutions of the American League crumble before their eyes. They watch him at the bat and note that he isn’t hitting the ball well; they watch around the bag and it’s plain that he’s not getting the balls he used to get; They watch him run and they fancy they can hear his bones creak and his lungs wheeze as he lumbers around the bases...On eyewitness testimony alone the verdict must be that of a battle-scarred veteran falling apart.
In the beginning I used to make one terrible play a game. Then I got so I'd make one a week and finally I'd pull a bad one about once a month. Now, I'm trying to keep it down to one a season.
"Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everybody who knew you when you [...] told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that."
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